IGHS70 - How StorX Network Ensures Data Privacy and Security

Jim Merrifield (00:00.59)
Well, hello and welcome to the InfoGov Hot Seat. I'm your host Jim Merrifield and with me today is Murphy John at StorX Networks. Welcome Murphy.

Murphy John (00:08.76)
Hey, John, Jim, thanks for having me. I'm super excited to be a part of your podcast.

Jim Merrifield (00:13.292)
Yeah, it's great to have you on the hot seat. Get to know you a little better. Can you kick it off and provide a brief introduction of yourself, your current role, and one fun fact about yourself?

Murphy John (00:24.184)
So my name is Murphy John and I'm

system and storage network. In my previous organization I was working

in the area of setup and management of internet infrastructure. So basically what it meant was we were taking care of setting up internet infrastructures, cloud infrastructure, email infrastructure for all big corporates, banks, FFIs, that's how I started getting interested in this cloud. And around 2017 is when I started deeply looking at the field of blockchain. I was having a lot of trouble because there was a lot of abuses happening in data

abuse of a lot of hacking incident happening in the data was abused, used by third parties. The case of ransomware, which is getting more and more. So I was really looking for a holistic solution, which would provide solutions or a security for all the data that is being stored on the internet. And that's how I started getting interested in this field of blockchain, providing security with blockchain. And I started looking into different options that are available. And in 2021 is when I met our founder

Mr. Handy Barod. And I was really impressed by the insight that he had about providing security. He felt that the data should always, the power of the data should always be deciding with the user. The user should have complete control of the data and he should decide who should have access to it. So he was of the fact that the data whenever is residing in the cloud, nobody should access it and the user should not be worrying that any other service provider or third party can ever access or analyze this data. So that's how it started looking

Murphy John (02:05.419)
forward and I got started knowing Mr. Barot's vision and then I started working with him and from that time I'm working with StorX Networks taking care of the ecosystem growth and partnerships. One fun fact is I really like traveling and I like to travel in some weird places so that's one of the things that I really like about

Jim Merrifield (02:28.238)
That's great. Hey, who doesn't like the travel? And thanks so much for giving us the background. You've been in this space for quite a while and a little history on StorX. Appreciate that. So we're gonna dig into this a little bit. So, cause I'm really intrigued about the name StorX So can you explain in simple terms how StorX's decentralized storage network works and how it ensures data privacy?

Murphy John (02:31.37)
Yeah.

Murphy John (02:55.741)
So basically, StorX is a decentralized cloud storage platform. It's a platform which uses the technology of blockchain and decentralized technology basically to ensure that the data is really pretty private and you have complete control over your data. So how we ensure is we have a unique architecture which is set up for this. So what happens is whenever a user is using StorX to upload his data, first in the user's device itself,

the data gets locked with users own private key. And then it's uploaded on the network where it's broken down into small pieces. It's like fragmented into small pieces. Then we replicate those pieces and then we distribute it to around 2,500 nodes which are spread worldwide. So what happens is because of this unique feature, nobody can ever access your data unless it's authorized by you. Means you, because you are locking the file with your

Nobody ever can ever participate or look into your data. Even we as a service provider would never

access to your data. So you have complete control over the data. And what happens is, even if some data segment is lost or one of the nodes is not responding due to any technical reason, since we are replicating the data and keeping it in multiple locations, users will always have an access to the data. So you need user's private key to access the data. And this is only with the user. It doesn't get shared with the network or any other third party. So that ensures that the data is really very private, very secure. plus really good.

That's one of the very unique way in which we ensure that the user's data is really private and not accessible to anyone.

Jim Merrifield (04:37.55)
Yeah, that's unique indeed and thanks for explaining that in simple technical but non-technical terms. So let's compare, how does does StorX compare to traditional cloud storage providers in terms of cost and security?

Murphy John (04:54.327)
That's a very good question and I keep getting asked this question again and again whenever I'm visiting someone

seminars or sessions that I attend. So first of all is the unique way in which we store the data. So if you look at the traditional cloud service providers, the big monopolist companies who have been providing cloud service and almost hold 80 to 90 % of the cloud market share right now for so many years, they have very straightforward method in how the data is being stored. So if you go to any of the cloud service provider, the way in which your data is stored is they take your file and they put it in a single location as a whole file.

So what happens is your file is unencrypted, your file is open to everyone. Anybody can access the file, anybody can have a look at it. Even if you are encrypting the data, the encryption keys also lies with your service providers, which means the data is not private. It can be accessed by anyone at any point of time.

If you compare the same thing with us, so what we're doing is whenever user is using StorX to upload this file or to store this file, what we do is on user's device itself, we log the file with user's unique key. And this unique key is required to access the file anywhere. So what happens is the file gets logged with user's unique key. The encrypted file is then transferred to the platform where it's broken down into small pieces, like we fragment those data, and thus we replicate those data fragments, and then we send

it across to all the nodes that we have. So what happens is the entire network which consists of around 2500 nodes or will be holding some part of your data. It is not every part, it would be some part of the data. So at any point of time, even if any of the node gets hacked by any third party, he would not be able to access your data because the node is actually storing a small fragment of your data, which is also encrypted. So it becomes really very difficult to hack in or access or have any knowledge about the data.

Murphy John (06:51.481)
So this is the major what you can see difference between the normal service providers, the traditional cloud service providers and us. And because of this, what happens is the unique way in which you're storing the data, we are able to provide you some very unique benefits. Like one is of course the privacy. Your data is really very private. Nobody can access it. The second is your data is redundant. That means if your data is stored as fragments across multiple locations. So what happens is if any of the

data if any point of time one node is not available users can always collect that data fragment from a different segment of the node. The third part is because we are encrypted the file and fragmenting the file you don't have threats of virus or ransomware so in this way we are able to really provide you a very sophisticated secure system which is really very private so that's how we are different from any other service provider that's

one part and the second part is because we are fragmenting the data we are able to

we are using storage system which is already lying unused. So that's how we help you to get in the whole storage, the same storage at a very low cost. So when you use StorX for storing your data, you're able to secure your data as well as get it much cheaper than the traditional storage providers. So this is how we from the other service providers generally.

Jim Merrifield (08:17.88)
Makes sense.

Jim Merrifield (08:22.158)
That's all about security, privacy, and then of course costs, right? When you think about moving your data to the cloud, that's always the first question from our IT folks is, you what's the cost? What's the lift? So appreciate that. So let's talk about some real world applications or use cases where StorX's technology could be particularly beneficial. Maybe you could touch on some use cases and even some industry sectors that

that you're seeing benefit from this type of technology.

Murphy John (08:54.455)
So we have very limited time to discuss this, but I'll give you a brief of what we've been doing across and what is the kind of users that we have been servicing for the past years. So first of all, since we are a very secure layer, we are very

layer of storage. of our data, most of the storage is being used by end users for storing some kind of data in an encrypted way. So we're actually an alternative for them to any storage service provider or file storage provider, which is generally available. And the best part is we have a 2GB free plan. That means up to 2GB, we don't have any charge for you. You can use our platform, all the features you can use without paying anything. So that's one of the wonderful things. And almost all, of

of the users that we have are the B2C users are all using it for storage of the data. The next part is we are working with corporates, we are working with Web3 companies and we are working with development companies. So I give you two examples where we have live use cases where people are using it. One is we're using, we're working with Web3 companies. Web3 companies are using us in combination with the traditional storage providers but

Some critical data information that they don't want to store it with the traditional service providers or they're not comfortable due to privacy concerns, they use our platform. So we are fully SD compatible storage. That's why we can use it. So any user can send in the data to our platform using APIs and all. So we have a lot of APIs with which you can use data, which use our platform for storing the data. So that's one use case where Web3 companies are using our data storage for storing some data.

companies like IoT companies. we have a very reputed company based out of Canada who is using our services. So what he's doing is he's sending a whole lot of data from this IoT segment, IoT devices, small IoT devices which are sending a huge amount of data. So all this data is transferred to our platform and then using to store it on a platform and then they are analyzing the data.

Murphy John (11:00.343)
So what happens is because of using this technology, using this distributed technology, they're able to save a lot of cost. Because what happens is when they were working out the costing for this project, using traditional cloud was working out very, very expensive for them because the amount of data that's going to be deployed and the amount of data that's going to be transferred because of this IoT. There are many multiple IoT devices sending multiple data at the same point of time. So they found that they could do it really very well.

with a distributed system and they...

So we partnered with them and we ran the use case with them and it was successfully tested. Now they're using us in a very big way. So we partnered with them. That's one use case. The third use case we're working with is we're working with a medical sales company based out of Asia. What they're doing is they're using our platform to securely store a lot of critical information, medical related information. So because what happens is medical devices or medical data is subjected to a whole lot of regulations like the power

So we were able to set up an entire infrastructure for them, a private infrastructure for them based on the storage technology and then the data because the data is governed by

and the data has to reside in the same country. So we have set them up in such a way that they use the benefits of the decentralized cloud infrastructure, but they're it for their own use. It's not being shared by anybody. So these are the use cases where we are really using a thing. And we're also working with a lot of AI companies where they are using it in combination with various tools to save data, to store data, to transfer data. So this is some of the unique cases that we are working

Murphy John (12:46.035)
with clients to provide them a very high level of security privacy and ensure that the data is really available.

Jim Merrifield (12:53.942)
Excellent, excellent. So you mentioned AI companies at the end. How is StorX being used in the AI ecosystem?

Murphy John (12:57.815)
That's That's for you.

Murphy John (13:03.201)
So we form a storage layer for this project. what happens is since we are an SD compatible storage, we are using this in combination with 10-Sore PyTorch, Haringface, and DVC. So we really work really very well with them as a storage layer. And people are able to send and receive a huge amount of data.

there's no egress charge for them and they can store a huge amount of data and scale accordingly. So what happens is because all this project are starting and we have a very generous egress plan and we have a generous offering for them, we normally onboard them at very nominal rate or sometimes if the use case is really exception, we also offer them free services for the first six months to try it out. So that's really very well that we're going on with.

Because of the integration with this tools like Tensor, PyTorch, Hugging Face and DVC, we are really working very well with them. So that really forms a very good use case and they're able to save cost, they're able to offer efficient services and it's very high security also at the same time. So at one fees, they are able to get in all the services built into it.

Jim Merrifield (14:12.718)
Very good, very good. So we talked about what you're doing now, but what about the future? What are StorX's future plans and vision for the development of this type of storage technology?

Murphy John (14:25.431)
So we have very great plans since we are just a storage layer. So what we offer is our code services revolves around providing secure service, privacy focused services. We've been working with a lot of tools. We've been integrating a lot of tools. work with, currently we have around 15 integrations with backup tools and AI tools. So people use this in combination, different combination. We work with very popular backup tools, like Rusty, Duplicate and all.

we can automate a lot of backup into our platform as well as primary data being stored. So what happens is every week or every two weeks, we are able to launch a new integration and help our customers. So our whole focus throughout the year will be getting more integrations, getting more customers, getting more cases around use, cases around AI.

Jim Merrifield (15:15.726)
It seems very scalable and exciting. So I'll have to reach out to you and continue talking about your future plans and vision. Appreciate that, So I know we talked about a lot here, a lot to digest especially. Is there anything else you'd like to share with the audience before we let you go?

Murphy John (15:35.0)
So we would welcome all the users who are really concerned about privacy and security to come and visit us. Do look at our services and you're welcome to email us. We love working with developers. We love working and partnering with developers for unique use cases.

We can ensure you that whenever you're partnering with us, we will help you and ensure that your project saves a lot of cost in terms of egress, in terms of cost of saving, and offer you very high and scalable services which will be very difficult with the other service providers, or it's very costly. So we will be able to offer you efficient services with them. And we are open to partnership. We are open to pilot testings with all kinds of customers.

Jim Merrifield (16:22.966)
Awesome. Well, it seems like you're well positioned, especially with this age of technology and focus on helping developers and tech companies scale. So I appreciate that Murphy. And thanks so much for spending some time on the hot seat today to get a little, to learn a little more about yourself and StorX network in general. For our audience, if you'd like to be a guest on the InfoGov hot seat, just like Murphy here, all you have to do is submit your information through our website.

InfoGovHotSeat.com and I thank you so much and enjoy the rest of your day.

Murphy John (16:56.12)
Thank you very much.

Jim Merrifield (16:59.427)
You as well.